38 Years is Too Much and Not Enough for the 33rd District

One more term of Henry Waxman is too much for the residents of the Santa Monica Bay.

38 years -- he's been in Congress longer than the growing number of unemployed college students have been living and breathing -- and still looking for a job during one of the most economically regressive presidential administrations in modern times.

He was kicking around in Congress when Barack Obama was living in Honolulu. Henry Waxman has carried water for the amateur junior Senator-turned-chief executive ever since he took office in 2009. Waxman has not demonstrated an independent frame of mind on anything noteworthy will in Congress, a partisanship which has stalled any meaningful debt reducation, deficit relief, and economic recovery over the past three years.

Waxman entered Congress the same year that Nixon resigned from the Presidency. It's time for Waxman to take a well-deserved departure from Congress. Nixon lied about covering up the Watergate break-in. Waxman has aggressively hounded witnesses and subpoenaed government officials over the most inconsequential of matters. As chairman of the Oversight  Committee, he dragged out an unnecessary investigation into steroid use in Major League Baseball, an unconscionable waste of time and taxpayer dollars..

Then again, for a politician who has bragged about refusing to run even a meager campaign to retain his seat, he certainly still commands a great deal of elected arrogance.

The United States, from coast to coast, has manifested a growing willingness to throw out the old and tired incumbents, men who have overstayed their welcome, giving off an easy complacency, as if their seat in Congress now belongs to them by virtue of birthright.

Congressman Waxman has not faced a real challenge in forty years. That kind of non-campaigning would make anyone soft and easy to dispense with. Certainly it turns attentive politicians into complacent pols who are convinced that they need not spend any time or money keeping their place in office.
Independent challenger Bill Bloomfield wants to end Mr. Waxman'seasy  reign in Washington. He takes into account the latent frustrations of West Los Angeles and the Malibu-Pacific Palisades coastline in taking down the former chairman of the House Energy Committee. Sooner or later, a politician cannot take every vote for granted. Mr. Bloomfield certainly will not, as Mr. Waxman has for the past thirty plus years.